The present invention relates generally to water rescue of overboard personnel in distress.
Currently, seawater rescue missions are performed by the U.S. Navy with respect to personnel lost overboard, and by the commercial fishing industry as well as recreational boaters for people lost overboard. Often timing, travel distance and environmental conditions contribute to unsuccessful rescue and high loss of life despite use of rescue gear such as lift boats, buoys, inflatable life-saving rafts, deployment helicopters and other rescue facilities. Recently, assistance in the rescue of overboard sailors in distress equipped with a passive monitor as a source of locational identifying signals has been proposed for signal pick-up and relay at a shipboard rescue location from which available rescue gear may be quickly dispatched by deployment onto the seawater. Generation of such locational and identifying signals is associated with a system disclosed in a publication entitled, xe2x80x9cMan Overboard Indicator/Personal Tracking and Monitoring Systemxe2x80x9d listed in the Information Disclosure Statement submitted herewith. However, in view of rescue delay problems associated with deployment and use of available rescue gear, it is an important object of the present invention to provide for an improved rescue mission that is more rapid and effective, involving less costly use of certain available rescue gear including the aforesaid tracking and monitoring system as a source of the locational and identifying signals from the overboard person in distress.
In accordance with the present invention a rescue mission for overboard personnel in distress initiated in response to a locational and identifying signal, involves use of a streamlined shaped rescue watercraft, generally known in the art, as a self-powered water surface vehicle deployed some distance from a person in distress. Pursuant to the present invention, such water surface vehicle has a storage container for an inflatable life-saving raft (also generally known in the art) which is transported by the vehicle undergoing self-powered propulsion from its deployment location under directional guidance control of remotely generated signals or sensing signals onboard the vehicle for travel toward the distress location of the overboard person with the life raft stored therein. Upon arrival of such water surface vehicle at the distress location of the overboard person, the life raft is deployed by ejection and inflation so as to floatingly accommodate support of the person to be rescued. Such inflated raft with the rescued person thereon is then moved on the water to a rescue location. Initial deployment of the unmanned water surface vehicle may be effected from a marine vessel or from a rescue helicopter aircraft. Sequential operations involving initial vehicle deployment, travel of the vehicle in different directions by self-powered propulsion under signal applied directional guidance, between its deployment location and the rescue location, as well as deployment of the raft including its ejection from vehicle storage, inflation and rescue delivery, may be effected automatically or by manual remote control by signals from some central location.